Saturday, April 7, 2012

X-Files Saturday: Conspiracies, Aliens, & Alaska

We're still in season two. Scully has been returned from her abduction, but the side effects have yet to rear their head. The X-Files have been officially reopened, so Mulder and Scully are up to their old tricks again. There were seven "monster-of-the-week" episodes (including Irresistible--a disturbing episode about a fetishist who becomes infatuated with Scully, getting her into a whole heap of shit yet again, and spawns a part two later in the series) before we got back to the good ol' conspiracy theories that make Mulder and Scully have profound voiceovers about needing to know and trusting no one.

Colony starts with Mulder in a very bad way and Scully yelling at doctors, insisting she's a doctor and knows better than they. Turns out she's right, but it takes us two episodes to get there.

David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Often while reporting on the angsty-ness of The X-Files, I find myself wondering what a truly angsty face would be. Is it this?

Maybe not, but it's certainly not a happy face. This guy ends up dead (obvi, right?) and Mulder and Scully get blamed for it. But it wasn't them, it was this bastard:

He's a shape shifting alien. And because he's a shape shifter, he can turn himself into anyone and you'd never know it. It's the type of thing that makes Scully go hmmmm when "Mulder" shows up at her door at the same time she's on the phone with him.

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully in The X-Files

The people in charge of the conspiracy know they need to split Mulder and Scully up. A good way to do that is to present Mulder with his missing sister.

David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Oh goodness! How angsty is that? He's happy and sad and confused and angry and every emotion there is all at the same time! Of course, the good times can't last. While real Mulder is making faces at his sister, alien shape shifter Mulder is hunting down Scully. He finds her, and gives her a bit of the business.

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully and David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Mulder gets pretty confused by his sister's appearance and the story she tells him about clones and colonization.

David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Scully's also pretty upset, as evidenced by the blood coming out of her head.

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully in The X-Files

There's an exchange on a bridge, and it goes poorly. So poorly in fact, that Mulder's sister corrodes.

Corroding is another symptom of angst.

Mulder cries.

David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

After he pulls himself together, he does what anyone whose sister was abducted, cloned, and systematically destroyed in an abortion clinic fire would do--he goes to Alaska. But he doesn't visit Juneau or Anchorage or any place that would be on a map. He goes someplace that can only be found using the exact coordinates. I mean, I bet GoogleMaps could find him, but still. It was intense.

While in Alaska, he finds that pesky submarine he was looking for and that bastard shape shifter from earlier. They fight. Mulder cries again.

David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Well, he's definitely about to cry. Presumably the shape shifter ass-rapes Mulder and gives him a rotovirus. Scully is the only person who understands anything about this thing. And that explains why she burst into the ER yelling at the idiot doctors at the beginning of the previous episode. They appeal to her reasonable nature and do what she says. Mulder lives, and Mulder and Scully make sweet sweet love in the hospital bed* they share a sweet moment in the sparsest hospital room on earth.

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully and David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully and David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully and David Duchovny as Fox Mulder in The X-Files